Anecdotes

The well-known Arpanet was the first operational packet-switching network. 1 Almost completely unknown is what we claim was the second operational packet-switching network, the LFK Network—although, admittedly , it was a fairly minimal network. Work on the LFK Network began in fall 1970, and it was installed and accepted by fall 1972. It was used as part of a logistics system relating to the Norwegian Air Force and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It was developed for the Norwegian Air Force Supply Command (the Luftforsvarets forsyningskommando [LFK] in Norwegian) by two companies: Siemens Norway, which held the formal contract with LFK, and Norsk Data (ND), 2 which was a subcontractor to Siemens, but did most of the technical work. The relevant offices of both companies were based a little east of downtown Oslo. The people in LFK supervising this project were located near the Norwegian government's research complex in Kjeller, about 30 km northeast of Oslo. The LFK Network and Arpanet In 1970, having participated in Arpanet's development and the installation of the first several Arpanet packet switches as part of the Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) Interface Message Processor (" IMP Guys ") team, Dave Walden and his family were trying to find a place he could work in Europe so they could experience living there for a while. By happenstance, Walden sent a resume to ND. He was interviewed by ND cofounder Rolf Skår who happened to be spending a term at MIT as a visiting engineer, 3 and ND offered him a job. Walden, with his family, moved to Oslo in September 1970 to begin work for ND. When he got to Oslo, Walden was informed that ND had a contract to participate in the development of the LFK Network, and he was asked to work on that project. Still excited about participating in the accomplishment of developing the first packet switch, Walden encouraged following techniques used in the Arpanet IMP, although the scale of the LFK Network didn't require the generality in the Arpanet IMP. However, because the LFK Network was done as a relatively modest commercial contract, bidding to do this job as a network probably wouldn't have been possible for ND without the established Arpanet design. Instead, it probably would have been implemented as a terminal concentrator. System design overview The LFK Network was a fancy teletype front-end for a Control Data 1700 and …